Commerce capabilities 101: A beginner’s guide to checkout with commercetools

Challenges in today’s checkout experiences

Today’s online checkout processes are stuck at a crossroads. On one hand, shoppers expect a fast, seamless experience. On the other, many brands and retailers still fail to deliver on these expectations. In a world where convenience reigns supreme, even a slight hiccup in the checkout flow — a missing guest checkout option or limited payment methods — can mean the difference between a completed sale and an abandoned cart.

Generic and uninspired checkout designs are also holding businesses back. Many well-known platforms, like Shopify, offer standardized checkout templates that might be great for businesses to get their eCommerce experiences off the ground, but leave little room for differentiation. 

While these templates may seem convenient at first, they strip away the opportunity for brands to stand out or connect with their customers on a deeper level. This one-size-fits-all approach leads to missed opportunities to personalize, optimize and create memorable experiences that inspire loyalty and repeat purchases, leading to the following issues: 

• Generic templates fail to cater to diverse customer needs, offering little in terms of dynamic pricing, personalized recommendations or localized payment options. 
• The inability to adapt to modern consumer preferences, such as buy now, pay later (BNPL) or digital wallets, further limits the appeal of these standardized checkouts. 
• Delivering cookie-cutter checkout experiences means every store’s process feels identical and prevents brands from standing out in a competitive market. 

In a nutshell, for brands and retailers to thrive, they need to go beyond the basics, unleashing the full potential of personalization and flexibility to create one-of-a-kind experiences.

9 best practices to craft differentiated checkout experiences

How to create a checkout experience that your customers appreciate and love? And how to optimize it over time? Here’s a list of the main best practices to design your checkout process and the benefits they bring.

1. Simplify checkout navigation and minimize disruptions
Limit unnecessary redirects during checkout and avoid intrusive pop-ups. Clear instructions and a progress bar guide customers through the process, so you can reduce confusion and frustration.

2. Create memorable interactions to reinforce brand loyalty
Design a checkout experience that reflects your brand identity and leaves a lasting impression: Offer freebies, subscriptions and additional services, personalize the process with tailored messages, and incorporate other elements that foster a sense of exclusivity and connection with customers. 

You can also incorporate innovative technologies, such as voice commerce and AI-powered recommendations, to deliver a standout experience.

3. Optimize checkout flows to reduce cart abandonment
Implement a streamlined checkout process by eliminating unnecessary steps and making the interface intuitive. Use features like express checkout or even guest checkout, saved preferences and auto-filled details to reduce barriers to completion. A clear and simple process minimizes errors, accelerates transactions and improves customer satisfaction.

4. Leverage personalized upselling to increase order values
During checkout, offer exclusive product recommendations or discounts tailored to the customer’s behavior or cart contents. This strategic approach not only encourages higher-order values but also deepens customer engagement.

5. Offer multiple payment options to enhance conversion rates
Support diverse payment preferences, such as digital wallets, buy now, pay later (BNPL) options and localized payment solutions. This flexibility reduces friction, ensuring fewer abandoned carts and higher conversion rates.

6. Provide flexible delivery options to improve convenience
Empower customers to shop on their terms by offering a variety of delivery methods, such as same-day shipping, multi-shipping or buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS).

7. Display security features to strengthen trust and build confidence: Incorporate visible security elements, such as SSL certificates, secure payment icons and compliance badges, to reassure customers that their data is protected. For global businesses, ensure that your checkout complies with local tax regulations and payment requirements to enhance credibility.

8. Continuously refine the checkout process to drive long-term growth
Use analytics and customer data to monitor performance and identify opportunities for improvement. Regularly test new features, optimize layouts and personalize experiences to keep the process fresh and relevant. A scalable checkout system ensures that your business can seamlessly adapt to growth and expansion into new markets.

9. Localize the experience for global markets
Offer localized checkout features, such as language preferences, currency options and culturally relevant payment methods. Ensuring compliance with regional regulations, including tax and shipping policies, creates trust and a smoother customer experience across international markets.

Creating exceptional checkout experiences with commercetools

Building on these best practices for designing a seamless, customer-loved checkout, commercetools gives you the flexibility to put them into action. 

By leveraging its scalable, composable architecture, your business can simplify navigation, personalize interactions, and optimize flows while staying true to your brand identity. The result: A checkout experience that not only converts more customers but also reinforces loyalty and supports long-term growth.

Take the example of Breville, a kitchen appliance brand. The company transformed its checkout process into a unique experience with commercetools by tapping into synergies with its premium coffee brand, Beanz, in a single checkout journey. For instance, Breville can offer advanced purchase and subscription options, such as a 1kg bag as a one-time purchase, plus a 250g bag on a weekly subscription during checkout, providing a personalized and on-brand experience that can be found only at breville.com. 

The gourmet cookie brand Christie Cookie Co. also personalized the checkout process with unique capabilities powered by commercetools. The Multi-Ship checkout experience allows customers to add up to 500 addresses to a single order with different shipment speeds, dates and gift messages — all the while calculating the total payment due frictionlessly.

At commercetools, we offer three ways to power your checkout: 

• Option 1: commercetools B2C Commerce: If you want full flexibility, you can build your own checkout experience using our APIs. With them, you can manage everything, from cards and orders to shipping and taxes, exactly the way you want.
• Option 2: commercetools Checkout: We provide an out-of-the-box Checkout solution. With just a few configurations in Merchant Center and minimal coding, you can integrate a ready-made checkout into your website. It comes with built-in PSP integrations, so you don’t have to handle them yourself. This makes it much easier to go to market quickly, with minimal effort up front and very little maintenance required afterward.
• Option 3: AI Hub: If you want to support agent-led shopping, the AI Hub handles payments within Gen AI channels, such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. It syncs your product data, adheres to the Agentic Commerce Protocol and enables agents to complete purchases from start to finish. 

Option 1: commercetools B2C Commerce

Our customers can leverage commercetools B2C Commerce to create cohesive and intuitive checkout experiences across any channel. Here are the main components: 

Cart and order management

Businesses can automatically enable carts to calculate prices dynamically based on an address, product distribution channel, tax settings, discount rules, shipping costs or user groups. Key features include:

• Managing incoming orders from multiple channels in one place.
• Advanced search, filter and sorting options allow for quick order management, including viewing and managing orders before diving into item details. 
• Detailed breakdowns of order totals, taxes and discounts.
• Create new carts and orders or duplicate existing ones, view and process orders, select parcel options, track the shipping status and manage returns.
• Synchronize orders with your backend system, such as an OMS or ERP, in real-time.

Customizable checkout flow UIs

Your business can design checkout UIs that cater to specific customer needs, such as:

• One-page checkout experiences with minimal development effort.
• Rule-based routing for tailored payment methods based on location, product categories or other criteria.
• Flexible configurations for dynamic shipping and tax settings.

Tax categories, settings and shipping 

Complying with local regulations and offering diverse shipping methods is critical for global businesses. With commercetools, you can set up your product pricing for success using extensive tax settings that support international requirements.

Additional features include:

• Configure multi-shipping options like BOPIS or click-and-collect and implement multi-shipping within a single order. You can turn these on and off for different regions, customer groups, seasonality, etc.
• Integration with more than 10 OMS (Order Management System) solutions for streamlined logistics.
• We support internal and external taxes, merchants' ability to set up shipping zones, and the ability to enable/disable shipping methods. 

Shopping lists

Implement a “save for later” feature for individual customers, enabling them to create a shareable wishlist or public collection of products. 

Option 2: commercetools Checkout

commercetools Checkout provides an out-of-the-box checkout solution and built-in PSP integrations, enabling businesses to set up checkout faster and easier without building everything from scratch. With just a few lines of code and simple configuration in Merchant Center, you can integrate complete checkout and payment flows into your website. The solution reduces your implementation time and effort by up to 80%, allowing you to launch faster with less ongoing maintenance.

It comes with built-in PSP integrations, providing flexibility to work with various payment service providers and payment methods, including digital wallets. We handle the complexity of integrating and maintaining PSPs, so all you need to do is enable them in Merchant Center and start using them in your checkout.

Additionally, commercetools Checkout offers the flexibility to customize the user experience. You can localize checkout flows for different markets, adjust branding to match your look and feel, and configure rules to personalize the customer journey.

Features include: 

• Complete Checkout and Payment Only modes: Choose between a full end-to-end checkout with address, shipping, payment and order summary steps that cover the full checkout journey. It provides a lightweight payment component that lets you benefit from our payment capabilities while customizing the rest of your checkout.
• Built-in PSP integrations: Connect instantly with major PSPs like Stripe, PayPal and Adyen using pre-built or custom payment connectors.
• Wide range of payment methods and digital wallet options: Offer cards, wallets, BNPL, PayPal and regional PSPs to meet diverse shopper needs.
• Secure and convenient stored payment methods: Let shoppers save credit cards, hassle-free checkout while keeping sensitive data protected.
• Gift cards and split payments: Support gift cards, vouchers and mixed payment methods for more flexible checkout experiences.
• Smarter rules and personalization: Show or hide payment methods, discounts or terms dynamically based on shopper or cart attributes.
• Localized checkout experiences: Deliver multi-language support, local currencies, tax formatting and country-specific address fields.
• Custom branding and design: Match checkout with your brand using logos, colors, fonts and editable shopper-facing text.
• Embedded discount and promo codes: Enable shoppers to apply codes directly in checkout without disrupting their flow.
• Merchant Center control: Configure checkouts, manage PSP credentials, view payments and renew keys — all without code.
• Developer-friendly integration: Embed checkout into any site, app, or channel using SDKs, APIs and event hooks.

Option 3: AI Hub

AI Hub is the easiest way to make your products discoverable and shoppable inside ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Instead of building one-off integrations or maintaining custom logic for each platform, AI Hub handles the connection for your business. It prepares your catalog for GenAI channels, exposes safe commerce actions and enables agents to complete purchases end-to-end — all without extra engineering.

With AI Hub, your products don’t just appear in these channels. ChatGPT and Copilot can understand your catalog, recommend the right items, check availability and guide a customer through payment, all powered by the recommended protocols defined by Gen AI channels. Your business can get access to new, fast-growing discovery surfaces without having to rebuild checkout for every platform.

Features include:

• Shoppable experiences in ChatGPT: Use OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol so ChatGPT can browse products, create carts and complete purchases on your behalf.
• Commerce actions in Microsoft Copilot: Make your catalog understandable and actionable in Copilot, so users can ask, compare and buy directly within Microsoft’s ecosystem.
• Automatic catalog preparation: AI Hub cleans, structures and syncs your product data so both platforms interpret your catalog correctly as per defined standards and protocols. 
• Accurate pricing and availability: Ensure Gen AI channels always get real-time product, price, and stock information.
• End-to-end commerce flows: Support browsing, cart creation, checkout and payment directly inside the AI channels.
• Simple setup in Merchant Center: Configure and activate your AI channels with ease, eliminating the need for heavy development or ongoing maintenance.

Under the hood: Enterprise-grade platform

Both checkout solutions are powered by the commercetools Platform, ensuring that every transaction is both secure and scalable: 

• Enterprise-grade security: Stay PCI DSS Level 1 compliant with tokenization, domain whitelisting and automated credential rotation.
• Scalable performance: Handle thousands of orders per second globally with multi-region hosting and built-in reliability. commercetools processes thousands of orders per second without latency, ensuring no lost sales during your most critical moments.

How to get started

commercetools’ rich capabilities for checkout ensure your brand is ready to optimize every step of your checkout experience without limits. From extensibility options to a unified commerce solution, you have all the tools you need to differentiate your checkout workflows and create unique shopping experiences. 

In short, your business can offer a top-tier checkout experience that eliminates friction forever — helping your company increase revenue and loyalty today and tomorrow. 

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